First Star, Worst Star: March 8, 2015

Trade deadline has come and gone, teams are making one last surge for a playoff spot, and impact players are dropping like flies. First Star, Worst Star is as healthy as ever though!

FIRST STAR

David Schlemko went from being expendable on the COYOTES(!!!), to being expendable on the Stars, to being picked up on waivers by the Flames as they try to patch the gaping wound left by the loss of Giordano, to cementing his place in NHL shootout lore with a real dandy of a move.

Some things to keep in mind here; Schlemko is a DEFENSEMAN! And he’s out there dangling like he thinks he’s Pavel Datsyuk.

It looks like he almost loses everything at one point, but has enough control to roll with it and just squeak it in past Rask.

I don’t know that there’s any goalie in the league who has the “bolt from the net the second the puck crosses the line” down pat as well as Tuukka Rask.

Depending on how things break over the last month of the season this could potentially be the highlight of the Flames season!

WORST STAR

Let’s do a complete 180 and go from an amazing goal to a hilariously awful missed attempt. I shouldn’t say that; the attempt itself was fine. But it could not have ended more anticlimactically, and when you’re already up 6-0 it’s also a pretty solid dick move.

But this IS former Oiler great Linus Omark we’re talking about. A guy who hurt Dan Ellis’ feelings so badly with this classic shootout goal that it basically submarined his career.

You do have to give Omark some props for being ballsy (and/or stupid) enough to try and pull off something this obnoxious in the middle of a game. I mean, the kid DOES have some moves! SOMEONE SHOULD SIGN HIM TO AN NHL CONTRACT! Err, wait….

I loved that move. So tired of all this RESPECT crap half the time. Who cares what the score is and who cares how it’s done, get over it people. Hockey is about the fun of the game. It’s always been about entertainment and will always be about it.

So tired of people complaining about the Omark’s and Schremps of the world. (Even Crosby got called out for that stuff in jr). I more pi$$ed off at stupid hacking plays or players intently trying to injure.

Don’t be silly. The rulebook was thrown out ages ago. Calls are made or not made at the whim of bias officials who think they have the right to dictate the outcome of a game instead of an obligation to enforce the rules. In a well ref’d game you’d give at least 2 if not 10 and a game to anyone who tried to beat up Omark after he attempted his shot on net. Perhaps I’m wrong, but would it even have counted, given that his stick was above the crossbar?

What a joke that the officials spend more time enforcing some unwritten bro-code instead of the game.

High stick shouldn’t be an issue there, since it isn’t a shot on goal.
He’s technically playing the puck from behind the goal-line, to the front of the net, counting on a bounce back towards the net.
If he had wrapped his stick over/around and actually tried to tuck it in the net himself then stick position could be an issue, but as it stands he never took a shot on goal.

I guess the reasoning is that you don’t want to embarrass the opposition because they could come back and do that to you when you are having an of-night….Hackers too usually get their share of hacks back….